One faith — Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Hebrews 12:2
One love — we love because He first loved us. 1 John 4:19
The book of Revelation
The Unveiling of Jesus, written by John
“…and his face was as the sun shines in its strength.” Revelation 1:16
Jesus — Yeshua, salvation, the Lord saves. John — Yohanan, the Lord is gracious, the Lord has shown favour.
Revelation translated from the Greek. Every translation decision, and every place the Greek is unclear, is highlighted and clickable, with the reason.
Other marks open the words behind the translation, background on the seven cities it was written to, and each place it echoes the Hebrew scriptures.
Revelation 1:6 — “made us a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father” Read chapter 1 →
Start reading at chapter 1 → Why English translations are not perfect
The double-edged sword of Jesus
A reading: the word that created, discerns and judges — and what a sword coming out of a mouth is doing in a book of signs.
The Story of Revelation, in Short
A reading: Jon tells the whole book in a few steps. The pressure that calls people to change their minds, the sword that comes out of His mouth, the sealed kept, “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved,” and the crowd no one can count.
A reading: the writer of Revelation and the disciple whom Jesus loved. The servant who followed Him to the cross, the mother given into his care, the Gospel of John 3:16 and of full assurance, and the book that closes what Genesis opened.
Behold the Hand, Behold the Nail
A reading: the Hebrew name of God, YHWH, read as a witness to the cross, and every place the New Testament has people beholding Jesus. Also what the Bible’s numbers do and do not say, with counts, and how 666 is calculated.
Tongues, and Praying in the Spirit
A reading: what scripture says about tongues and praying in the Spirit, from Isaiah and Pentecost to Corinth and Ephesians, and what Revelation shares with it — the languages of every people, and the Spirit and the bride saying Come.
The Keys and the Gates of Hades
A reading: Jesus says the gates of Hades will not prevail against His assembly, and in Revelation He holds the keys of death and the grave. The dead in the Anointed rise, and Death and the grave are thrown into the lake of fire.
#1The first love — and what you fall from
A reading: what Paul left the assembly at Ephesus, what they kept, and what the letter says they let go of — grace, which is the thing you fall from.
#2What is asked, and who asked it first
A reading: the letter to Smyrna opens with one who was dead and came back, then asks them to be faithful to death. Nothing in it is asked that He has not already done — and it is written to people in a city, not to an institution.
#3Where you live, and what you eat
A reading: the letter to Pergamum names the address twice — where the accuser’s throne is — and then drops it. The charge, when it comes, is about a table.
#4What they knew, and who does the searching
A reading: both sides of the letter to Thyatira are described by what they know — and the phrase the claimants use is one word away from one of Paul’s.
A reading: the letter to Sardis keeps saying “name” — one they hold for themselves, and the names that are kept in a book and said out loud. Three of its five markers are sayings these assemblies already had.
#6A little strength, and an open door
A reading: a letter with nothing in it to correct, made of promises. All three of its Hebrew echoes are Isaiah’s, and the city is named for the word these readers used for love.
A reading: neither cold nor hot, “I am rich and need nothing,” and three things to buy from Him, read a line at a time against Romans, Hosea, Zechariah and the Gospels.
A summary of the echoes marked in Revelation 4 and 5: Micaiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel and Sinai in one room, Ezekiel’s scroll, the Lion seen as a Lamb, and the kingdom of priests promised at Sinai and made by His obedience.
A reading: “the trustworthy witness, the firstborn out of the dead, the ruler over the kings of the earth” (1:5), all three from Psalm 89. He testified to the truth before Pilate, and He gives His own title to Antipas.
A reading: the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy (19:10), whose testimony it is, what the book means by it, how the rest of scripture says it of every prophet, and the two phrases this book shares with Paul’s chapter on prophecy.
A reading: the first time John sees Jesus, He wears the high priest’s robe and walks among the lamps. What the robe and the lamps say, and the great high priest of Hebrews, who made us priests.
A reading: in Isaiah, “I am the first and I am the last; besides Me there is no God.” In Revelation, God says it, and Jesus says it, the one who was dead and is alive.
The Lion of the Tribe of Judah
A reading: told of a lion, John sees a lamb. Judah’s lion and the sceptre (Genesis 49:9–10), the obedience of the peoples and the obedience of faith, the lion’s roar in the prophets, and the false lion that devours.
A reading: the book’s own main name for Jesus, 29 times. Slaughtered and standing; the lamb God provides, from Isaac and the Passover to Isaiah 53; and the Lamb as the city’s temple, its lamp and its throne.
A reading: the four places Revelation says “shepherd,” all of them His. The Lamb who shepherds, Psalm 23’s rod and staff, the iron rod of Psalm 2, and the good shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep.
A reading: someone like a son of man on a white cloud, with a sickle. The two harvests the book keeps apart, the sickle of Jesus’ own parable (Mark 4:29), the wheat and the weeds, the fields white for harvest, the reapers He sends into them, and the winepress as the great pressure.
A reading: “I am the bright morning star.” Balaam’s star out of Jacob with its sceptre, given beside the iron rod at Thyatira; the star rising in the Gospels and in Peter; and the false morning star who said, I will be like the Most High.
A reading: Revelation has the bride and the wedding of the Lamb, and never says “bridegroom” of Him. The prophets, the Gospels and Paul do: the groom who gave Himself for her and gives her what she wears.
A reading: one Greek word in Philippians 3:10, to know him, followed through Paul’s letter, Moses, Jeremiah and Hosea, the Gospels, and the four places this book uses it; and where every knee bowing and every tongue confessing leads, in the same letter. With a song Jon recommends.
A reading: the two ways Jesus says I am in John, seven pictures with a promise attached and nine times with nothing after the words; where the two words come from in Exodus 3:14 and Isaiah’s I am he; and what Revelation does with them.
The 4th Seal — the Black Death
A reading: what was being sold while a quarter of the world died, why the prophets call that prostitution, and the one word Jesus said from the cross.
A reading: the sixth seal is the day of the LORD in the prophets’ own words, and it ends on a question — who is able to stand? The next chapter answers it with the same verb.
A reading of Isaiah 2: the nations streaming up to the LORD’s mountain, the proud running into the rocks at the sixth seal — and the only other “cleft of the rock” in the Hebrew Bible, where God hid Moses to see His glory.
A reading: the seven trumpets of chapters 8 to 11, one by one. The prayers that go up before them, the plagues of Egypt behind them, a third of everything, the three troubles, the pause before the seventh, and how the seven trumpets line up with the seven bowls, place for place.
A reading: two kinds of words, both taken in by hearing. The good news blesses the one who trusts it; sorcery deceives and leads away. Balaam’s curse that failed, the books burned at Ephesus, and Babylon from Nebuchadnezzar to Revelation 18.
A reading: scripture shows two rules over the whole earth — one set up by God and given, the other built by people or handed over for worship. Daniel’s stone, the seventh trumpet, and the offer Jesus refused.
A reading: Revelation names one who ruined the earth and says God will destroy the destroyers. What the book says the ruin is made of, and how the scriptures join idolatry, blood and taking what is not yours.
A reading of one verse: “I believed, therefore I spoke” (2 Corinthians 4:13). The spirit of faith is held, rests on the One who raises the dead, and speaks. From the teaching of Charles Nieman.
The Faith, or the Teachings of Demons
A reading: Paul sets two kinds of teaching side by side in five verses. Each clause of 1 Timothy 4 against what Rome teaches — marriage, food, the conscience, and a priesthood that belongs to every believer.
The Slanderer, the Animal and the Name
A reading: the Slanderer gives his throne to an animal that slanders God’s name, and a false prophet makes sure nobody can buy or sell without its stamp. Whose name you carry, Nero’s number, and what the Vatican bank’s own record shows.
False Prophets and Abominations
A reading: horns like a lamb and the voice of a dragon. His signs are real enough to watch — fire from the sky, an image that speaks — and the scriptures say how to know they lead the wrong way, and why God lets the lie through.
A reading: Jon defines the good news from the first sermon to the nations, Peter at Cornelius’s house, where the Spirit fell as it was spoken, beside the good news a messenger carries to every nation at Revelation 14:6.
A reading: every verse that says the sins of those who trust in Jesus have already been forgiven, what their tenses say about how far that reaches, and then John 20:23, the verse Rome builds the priest’s absolution on, beside what Rome itself says. Jon’s answer is the scribes’: God only.
Sin vs. Knowledge of the Truth
A reading: sin is missing the mark, and the blood is greater; what Hebrews says has no sacrifice left is turning from the knowledge of the truth. Revelation draws the same line, between the robes washed in the blood and those who love the lie.
A reading: the same messenger says the same sentence twice — come, I will show you — and shows a prostitute, then a bride. The marks of each, from Genesis to the last page, so you can hold your own up against them.
A reading: the seven bowls of God’s anger, one by one. The plagues of Egypt again, aimed at those with the animal’s stamp, called just, with the call to change one’s mind still being made, and “It is done.”
A reading: our best attempt simply to summarize the scriptures where Jesus talks about when He will come back, set out as they stand. Soon; nobody knows the day or the hour; like a thief; the things that come first; this generation; and the long delay of the parables. No date, no scheme.
A reading: Hebrews 10:25 in its own Greek, not abandoning our gathering together, encouraging one another, all the more as the Day draws near; the rare word it shares with the gathering at His coming, and a book written to be read aloud to gathered assemblies.
A reading: the city that comes down out of the sky from God, set beside the prophets it is built from. Ezekiel’s measured city with no temple left in it, Isaiah’s stones, light and open gates, the bride who is the city, the cube of the holy of holies, and everything the text says is no longer there.
A reading: the list at Revelation 21:8 is of people who are those things and will not change — not of God’s children who have done them, or still struggle. Everyone has lied. The gospel stands on top of that, and the good confession is worth holding.
A reading, and a critique of a doctrine rather than of a people: what Peter’s own letters contain, when the papal titles actually appeared, and where the difference over assurance really lies. It identifies nobody with anything in the book.
A reading, in Jon’s voice: what Leo XIV is saying is good, and the canon should match it. Faith alone, forgiveness, the gift, lording over and the chief shepherd; leaven, discipline and infallibility; Hebrews 10; and a prayer that the King’s law be acknowledged as the only law for believers.
More to come